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John Chapman Miller, Indiana, ’55.
John Chapman Miller, on his father’s side, was of Scotch-Irish Presbyterian stock, his great-grandfather having landed in North Carolina in 1767. His grandfather, John Miller, came to Kentucky in the early part of the 19th century, and thence to Jennings county, Indiana, in 1816. His father, John Smith Miller, there married Gertrude Denslow, and in 1822 brought his bride to a log cabin in a clearing he had made the season before in the forests of Johnson county, Indiana.
Here John Chapman Miller, named for his two grandfathers (one of whom, Maj. Chapman Denslow, was of the army that overthrew Tecumseh at Tippecanoe in 1811), was born May 12, 1831, and here he died, after a three-weeks’ illness of typhoid fever, September 17, 1901.
He was the youngest son in a family of six, and when he was a little past three years old his mother was left a widow. His boyhood was one of hard labor, but that was no strange thing in the life of a pioneer’s son. He found time to secure the rudiments of learning, as the private neighborhood schools of the day taught them, and in Satterthwaite’s academy, or high school, at Nineveh, then called Williamsburg, he found an inspiration to higher education. An uncle had been a student at Hanover College, but had died before completing his course. In those days and places there was little general sympathy with a boy who left the farm for college, and both for this reason and because he was a widow’s son, John C. Miller spent several years saving enough from his earnings as a farm laborer and school teacher to enable him to complete the scientific course at Indiana University, which he did in 1855. In his class were John W. Foster, ex-secretary of state; R. R. Hitt, now congressman from Illinois, and the late Judges D. D. Banta and W. C. L. Taylor, of the Indiana circuit court. Of these, all except Mr. Hitt (Β Θ Π) [Beta Theta Pi] were members of Φ Δ Θ [Phi Delta Theta]. Judge Banta, father of George Banta, Indiana, ’76, ex-P. G. C., was the room-mate and chum of Mr. Miller, who was initiated into Indiana Alpha in 1854, when Φ Δ Θ was but a little over five years old. Mr. Miller at once secured a badge from the Cincinnati jewelers who were making them for members of Ohio Alpha and Kentucky Alpha, and this badge was worn in the college year that saw the first Greek-letter insignia at Indiana University. Before that time Φ Δ Θ and Β Θ Π had both been sub rosa. Judge W. C. L. Taylor is said to have received and worn the first badge of all.
The year following his graduation, Mr. Miller read law at the university at Bloomington, and prepared to enter the legal profession, in which his powers of logic, eloquence and wit would have won for him high rank and fortune. Meanwhile, however, he had become a member of the Christian church. He became more and more convinced that he must devote his life to the ministry, and in the fall of 1856 he went to Bethany College. Here he studied the classics he had passed by at Bloomington, and the Bible studies his chosen profession demanded. He was graduated in 1858 and received the degree of A. M. in 1866.
The ministry of John C. Miller began in the early fall of 1858 at Providence, Johnson county, Indiana, and ended just forty-three years later at Mt. Pleasant church, in the same county, where he preached his last sermon on August 27, 1901, the day before his last illness began. He was both teacher and preacher in his own and neighboring counties from 1858 to 1862, when he was called to the church at Madison, Ind., where he was engaged from 1862 to 1866. Just before this he had met a charming Kentucky girl, who was visiting her relatives in Johnson county. After a brief courtship, Elizabeth Ann Garr became his wife on December 22, 1862, at Louisville, Ky.
In 1866 he bought the interests of the other heirs in his father’s farm and built there the home in which he died. For four years he conducted an academy at Nineveh, preparing many students for the Indiana colleges, and all the while preaching for near-by churches.
In 1871 the directors of the Northwestern Christian University, now Butler College of the University of Indianapolis, offered him a chair of philosophical and Biblical literature, and the Third Christian church of Indianapolis called him to be its pastor. He accepted both positions and filled the former until 1873, when he became a member of the board of directors, and the latter until 1876, when he resigned to return to his farm. He was a director of Butler for more than twenty years, serving most of the time as chairman of the committee on instructors, salaries and condition of school.
The return to Johnson county in 1876 was for a double reason. He believed that his children, to be soundest physically and morally, must be reared in the country, and he had decided from experience that the same amount of effort produced better and more permanent results among country churches than in the city.
After 1876 he preached for his home church and others in Johnson and neighboring counties. Nothing but illness ever prevented his appearing somewhere in the pulpit on Sunday during all the forty-three years of his ministry. He held many revival meetings, both for the churches with which he was regularly employed and for more remote congregations. His meeting with the church at Danville, Indiana, in the early seventies, was one of the first in the Christian church in which over one hundred became members in a few weeks. He delivered many special patriotic, temperance and educational addresses, and was in the early days of his ministry an active debater, holding two notable debates with Universalist champions—one at Vevay and one at Lick Spring, in Johnson county. He was also a frequent contributor to the religious journals of his church, and a delegate to many of the church conventions.
During all this time he took an active part in the outdoor work of his farm, which was done almost entirely by himself and his sons until the latter went away to college. His health broke down in the early days of his ministry, and his attainment of the age of threescore and ten was due solely to constant care and self-denial.
He educated at home his three daughters, and there prepared his three sons for college. Besides the cares of the ministry, his studies, his children’s studies and his farm work, he was for nearly 40 years, the father of the church and community in which he lived, the adviser and leader in every crisis of whatever kind. And this last was true of him throughout Johnson county, where two thousand Disciples knew him, perhaps, more intimately than any equal number of Christians know any of their ministers today. For most of them saw him every month. He sat at their tables, baptized their children, married them, buried their dead; taught, exhorted and comforted them. More than once, especially in matters affecting intemperance, he was an active leader in the work against moral deviations. He baptized not only his wife and her mother, but each of his children, as well as most of his other near relatives.
His devoted wife died July 14, 1889, and the pathos of his loneliness during those last twelve years, as his children were going away to college or to make homes of their own, and as his old friends sickened and died one by one, was deep and keen.
The funeral services were held on September 19 at the Nineveh church, and Z. T. Sweeney (Β Θ Π) was the speaker. The audience was gathered from every part of Johnson county. Among the six ministers present were Robert Sellers, Indianapolis, ’84, and Charles R. Hudson, Indiana, ’97.
Six children survive: Hugh Th[omas] Miller, formerly of Butler College, now with Irwin’s Bank at Columbus; Mrs. M. S. Kice, of Louisville, Ky.; John F. G. and Simeon V. B., students at Purdue University, and Gertrude D. and Laura G., who were living at home. It is believed that this is one of the first instances where a father and three sons have all been members of Φ Δ Θ. The youngest son completed his preparatory studies at Franklin College in 1900-1901, and while there pladged to Indiana Delta. At that time the father and three sons were connected with four different Indiana chapters—those at Indiana, Indianapolis, Purdue, and Franklin. Simeon V. B. Miller, however, was initiated by the Purdue chapter last year, as his brother, John, had been two years before. The three sons have still their father’s badge, which has been the oldest one worn at the last five national conventions, though two older were worn at the semi-centennial exercises at Miami University in 1899.
The Indianapolis News of September 18 said:
John C. Miller was a man of firm convictions, absolute fearlessness, ready wit, and sound judgement. In the militant days of his church he had wide fame as a successful debater. Along with his old-time honesty and purity and simplicity of life, and his thorough unselfishness and devotion to duty, he had a positive and aggressive side to his character that always made him a leader. He was widely read, and to the last continued his readings in several languages. He was a profound student of theology and philosophy, but in his preaching adhered closely to the essentials of right living. * * * Few men could have made the fight he did. He was born for the time in which he lived. He left an impression on several generations that will be for the lasting good of Indiana.
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